Giving Up..

Watching a nun decked out in her garb while carrying a Sacramento Kings backpack, I couldn’t help but smile and think that I will miss Africa for the next three months. The last four months here have been very hard, but at the same time I am very grateful for this time. During the past four months I have been able to do some very interesting research which in my idealistic world will contribute to increasing global health system’s efficiency. I have made friends, learned some French and learned a lot about global health systems.

In a way I am giving up because I signed on to be here from June-April. However, for my own mental health I needed to take a break for these next three months. I will be returning in January and staying for 3-4 more months at that time. My American drive to be productive makes it a lot harder because a lot of the work I was doing was on the computer and could be done in Florida. It is really hard to give up on something that I wanted to do and to see my own limitations. I am not usually one to quit, but I think the process of leaving is a humbling experience as well as explaining it over and over during the next few months.

I am currently sitting in Nairobi second-guessing my decision to leave and wondering if I could have forced myself through another 6 months in the country. However, when I take a deep breath and am honest with myself, I realize that I am not invincible and I need other people. I think the hardest part of the past four months is that I have been in essential isolation for at least 75% of the time. Much of this wasn’t my choice which made it even harder. I was getting some good ideas for a book and I wrote the first few chapters, but I would rather sacrifice a Dostoyevsky-esque novel for peace of mind and relationships.

I will miss Africa. I think part of it is because it is easy to idealize what you don’t have and I am sure that home will become less desirable than it seems right now. However, sometimes you have a gut feeling that you should do something and the fact that all of the appropriate authorities agreed seems to be further confirmation. I will miss the staring, the “good morning’s” at 9 PM, the crowded buses, Bugesera, observing the health system and becoming friends with a few people in Nyamata. However, the fact that I will be returning in a few months assuages my guilt and right now I am looking forward to being home.

 

Imposing my American expecatations

The inherent clash of cultures is a recognized part of cross-cultural experiences. I am currently undergoing the clash of American productivity and the Rwandan ability to postpone as many things as possible. I cant say that I am generalizing this to all of the people who live in Rwanda, but as a general rule of thum I would say that is accurate. I brought my can-do attitude here and accomplished a tremendous amount of work in the first three and a half months here. Now I am languishing in boredom and trying to find things to do. I have begun to learn GIS and implement a health map of the country. I am trying to work on a Pharmacy distribution system for our local hospital and I am writing a book. Unfortunately, these projects involve me working at my computer all day and are quite boring.

To be honest it is pretty lonely here and all of this free time is compounded by the fact that I dont have a whole lot of friends. I live in an isoloated part of the country and I dont have internet access generally. All of these things have made the time here seem harder and longer. However, I know that all great writers usually write out of their despair. I cant say that I am at the despair stage, but I think that I have the makings of a pretty cyinical/realistic novel about Africa’s vices and strengths. I am excited to see what happens with it and I can at least self-publish and put it on my shelf in the future.

On Tuesday I am going to the US Embassy to cast my ballot for the president of the United States. We get to fill in write in ballots and then the embassy will mail them in for the federal election. I am pretty resolved to vote for Obama mainly due to my dislike for Sarah Palin. I do think he will reform, but I am afraid he will try to do too much. It looks like our financial system will need repair for quite a while and health care and education are quite big tasks. It should be an interesting four years.

Did anyone disagree with my poverty has no future article?

 

Poverty has no future

Poverty has no Future

 

No! This rant is not going to be an optimistic panegyric about the hopeful expectation of eradicating, eliminating, obliterating (or any other dramatic, euphonious word) poverty. Rather, this may turn out to be a castigation of the structures that enhance poverty as well as a reproach to those who intensify poverty’s effects—the poor.

Yes, the poor. Of course it is not popular to criticize the poor; but, many of the problems that affect them are initiated by their own poor (get it?) choices. I am hesitant to lay full blame on the poor for their situation, but I also believe that it is more humanizing to give them credit for their situation rather than treating them as if they were mere victims of circumstance. The structures that purport to further development have, without a doubt, advanced the misguided priorities of many of the poor; however, ultimately the poor must decide for themselves.

Before I go much further I should define what I mean by poor. In Africa we have those who live on less than $1 dollar a day and their immense poverty forces them into a battle for survival. However, there is another class of poor who make around $5-10 dollars a day ($1,826-$3,653) and are able to make decisions about their future. When I refer to the poor, I am referring to the latter category.

Materialism is rampant amongst the poor. Of course, you wouldn’t think that someone who is making $10 per day would have many options, but then again, you would be wrong. Living in the heart of Africa with an archetypal African has given me a lot perspective which is hard to gain from reading the bleeding heart stories that come out of the NGO’s and Multi-National aid efforts.

Celestine is a typical “middle-class” African—poor. He works at the hospital as a nurse, rents a comfortable house and is soon to be engaged and married (Apparently that happens in tandem here). The last month of living with him has led me to understand that the poor can be materialistic in many of the same ways as we are in the West. Example: Celestine has told me repeatedly that it is imperative for him to buy a radio before he gets married. This seems like a rather simple item to purchase until you understand that he wants to buy a stereo system that costs around $600. Keep in mind that he makes around $3,500 per year, thus this purchase would be approximately 17% of his annual income. He has implored me on numerous occasions to bring him a radio from the USA when I come back from Christmas (ok, flying home for Christmas is about 60% of his annual salary).

We live in a house that is a lot nicer than most of the people around us. Celestine uses approximately 50% of his monthly salary to rent this house that is too big for him, but is impressive to his many friends who come to visit us. Of course this has lead to his impotence to save any money or to plan for the future. Due to the exorbitant expenditures that are expected of a groom, he feels the pressure to spend approximately $5,000- $7,000 dollars for his wedding. So do you take a loan for your wedding? YES!!! (This rings true with my own experience of American weddings).

Materialism is something that has been infused in our psyche and it may be something that we inherit at birth whether we want it or not. Celestine lives each day without any savings and he spends generously on his friends as he has money. This is one part of the African materialism that I think we would do well to learn from—being generous and valuing relationships, but I will save that for another rant. He will expend all of his energy and resources for a television, radio, or even his wedding, but will have a hard time buying food for his new wife. The image of success is much more important than reality.

When I say poverty has no future, I mean exactly that. The poor who have an infusion of materialism refuse to think about the future because the most important thing is to look good today. Granted, I think the provision of aid and other mechanisms have contributed to this mindset as well as the short life expectancy which has potential to reinforce a tendency to live from “paycheck to paycheck.” However, the majority of the responsibility for these decisions falls squarely on those who make them—the poor.

Like Chuck Paluhnik and later Brad Pitt in the guise of Tyler Durden who was really the imagination of Ed Norton’s character said, “We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need.”

Sounds a lot like us huh?

 

Democracy hard at work… ?

Yesterday was the 15th of September, also known in Rwanda as a day to take off work in order to vote for 5 minutes. I dont see the logic of shutting down the country’s commercial sector in order to support democracy. Now granted it was a lot better than watching Mugabe or Kibaki intimidate their way into negotiations to maintain their power. However, Rwanda is overwhelmingly a one party state, RPF, and they are the only legitimate party at this time in the country. For all the hype about democracy, why not have two legitimate parties and you can continue to work during the election.

 

10 Dollars a day…

So thinking I was a magnanimous guy who wants to identify with the people, I decided to move to Africa and try to live as cheaply as possible. In fact when many Westerners learn that I dont have a toilet, kitcken and eat beans and rice for most meals they are generally appalled. However, this only boosted my supercilious demeanor and encouraged me to continue. According to Western standards, 10 dollars a day translates into $3,560 per year. This would be considered far below the poverty line in the USA and in fact an average American probably makes about 10X this amount, 35,600 per year.

I always knew the statistic that a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. The boy who cleans our house makes 15 dollars a month, but he has a free place to live and food. His is considered a good deal. I have always considered myself as a person who could adapt to any situation, however, I cant ever imagine living on a dollar a day. My self-proclaimed live of poverty is still 10X what most people in Rwanda live on every day. I am living 10X better than the average person here and the average American is living 100X better than 1 billion of the world’s poor.

The answer is not .7% of GDP or free trade although those things will help. The poor are essentially lost and going to stay that way until they die. The only chance is their children. This sounds so bad, but I think it is the truth. Anyway, if you want to do something to help invest in the kids…

 

Sarah Palin

That was a brilliant decision…

 

Rocks and Rice

Don’t you love the feeling of biting down into a nice spoonful of rice only to hear a loud crunch? That would be my tooth connecting with the small rocks that are eventually going to give me kidney stones. I hope that I am back in the USA and have insurance by that time because it is a hassle to look through my rice everytime I want to eat.

It is strange to be living in Rwanda and yet I havent seen any of the tourist sites. Today on the bus ride to Kigali, the driver was talking to me about all of the tourist sites in Rwanda. I had to admit that after three months here I still havent seen the genocide memorial or any of the gorillas. Sad huh? I figure I should wait for people to come and visit and then I can go see the sites.

Research is coming along as I think we should have our preliminary dataset today. I am going to start working on making sure it is accurate, but that is another story. I also just finished writing an article for a Scholarship that I got so I will try to post that next time I am online.

 

Pusillanimous Days…

Do you ever have those days when you are afraid to try new things? Or the days when you are tired of people staring at you? I do..

I want to start running again, but so far have been deterred by the gawking that it entails. I dont know if it is being cowardly as much as frustrated. In the US when you are running, people look you admiringly, as if they are thinking “I wish I was doing that.” Not so here…. They are thinking “Why is this westerner running, why are his clothes so weird, where is he going, why is he in our town?”

So they are stupid excuses, but so far efficacious to keep me off the streets of Nyamata where I am the sole white. I am still waiting on some boxes that have been sent from the USA; I didnt know it would take 3 months to get here. I am sure ready for some starbursts….

C’est tout

 

My sister has a boyfriend…

This officially makes me the last one in my family… The Rwandans here mock me for the fact that my sisters will have babies before me.

 

Updates are getting sparse…

Here is the latest mass email I sent…

Sorry it has been so long since I last sent an update email. For those of you who wonder why I am apologizing for the dearth of emails I am happy to remove you from the list It has been more than a month and my life has changed in many ways; or rather my life situations.

After working 12 hour days for a good 2+ months straight I asserted my vacation rights. I took an 8 hour bus to Kampala and then hopped on a motorcycle to meet my friend Chris Vogt in the city. We ran errands and then returned to his house for a 10 day reprieve from the AIDS study. During my time with the Vogts, I sat on their hammock, read two books, played with David, sat in on a few of Chris’s classes, ate great food courtesy of Rebecca, and most importantly—I relaxed. After leaving his house I went and stayed with a good friend—Josephat and his family, before returning to Kigali on a tortuous 13 hour ride. I am still not sure why it was 8 to get there and 13 to get back…

Another goal of mine while I was at their house was to write my personal statement for my PhD applications. It is always challenging to put yourself onto two pages of paper and at the same time tell the admissions committee the things they want to know. All of this is to be done without sounding like you are reciting a resume. Thanks to Julie I was able to send back and forth about five drafts of it and I am essentially done with that phase, but still working on CV, recommendations, etc….

Rejection (or being wait listed)— Over the past few months I applied to a scholarship program with the State Department, a scholarship in New York, and to do my internship in Yemen. The State Department wrote me back and told me that I was a strong candidate, but was on the waitlist. I never heard back from them. Yemen turned out to be insecure due to the attempted bombing of the US embassy. The scholarship program in New York wrote me back to say I was a strong candidate, but would be on the waitlist in case funds became available. I hadn’t heard anything from them until two days ago when they emailed to tell me that funds had become available and they were going to be sending them in the next few days (Thanks Kashi for the idea to apply!).

Upon further consideration, all of these rejections/wait listings have turned out far better opportunities. If I would have done the scholarship program with the State Dept. and learned Arabic for three months I would have missed out on the research I have been doing this summer. This research has really confirmed my desire to pursue further education in the field of health policy and it will be a key factor in my acceptance to the programs to which I am applying. If I would have gone to Yemen and worked with the MoH and would have missed out on the opportunity to see the value of good research as well as gaining experience. However, it would have been nice to work with Mohammed Ebrahim there.

When I arrived from Kampala it was about five hours later than I had expected. I squeezed into a packed mini-van for the 30 minute ride to my new house. My new house is significantly cheaper than my place in Kigali so I didn’t know what to expect. What I got was a four bedroom house with two people living in it (I am expecting visitors). We have a yard, front porch, and a big living room with couches for about 10 people. I have been having custom made furniture made for my room. My desk and chair should be arriving today. I am living with a Psychiatric Nurse named Celestine. He speaks limited English and I speak limited French so it is interesting to see our communication, but I think it will help both of us to learn each other’s languages.

I am going to be working with a doctor who is the District Health Advisor for the Access Project in Bugesera. They are essentially trying to improve the management and organization of all 11 health centers in Bugesera. They collected a baseline assessment two months ago and are now working to meet their benchmarks for improvement every quarter. I am going to be helping with data collection, inspecting health centers, writing monthly and quarterly reports, etc… However, this week I am focusing my time on the AIDS study.

I am also studying for the GRE, which I am going to be taking on November 17^th in Kampala. Thanks to Don for sending me the GRE for dummies book. It is fun to be seeing words like pusillanimous and nefarious again I think that knowing that there is a writing section this time should stress me out a little less than last time when I discovered it on test day. Also, I can’t confirm this 100%, but I don’t think there is internet within 30 minutes of my house so my updates will be less frequent. Also, I am the only white in Nyamata, which causes quite a stir. If you really want to surprise me call me in Rwanda

Peter